The Apple Module Enhances Drought Stress Tolerance by Integrating Ascorbic Acid Metabolism.

Drought stress severely restricts crop yield and quality. Small noncoding RNAs play critical roles in plant growth, development, and stress responses by regulating target gene expression, but their roles in drought stress tolerance in apple () are poorly understood. Here, we identified various small noncoding RNAs and their targets from the wild apple species via high-throughput sequencing and degradome analysis.